A garment worker is noticeable in Dhaka city. Most of the workers are young women. They are very hard working.We are going to introduce a girl named"Nasima" who is a garment worker. We will go through her lifestyle and special emphasis will be given, the struggle she is facing with her poverty. In Bangladesh almost 70% or 80% workers are young girls. They come from different areas of the country. It is appropriate time for education when they come to Dhaka or other towns and starts working in different garments factories. They live in severel slum reas and suffer much. Their salary is very poor. In some garments factories they work forom 8 am. to 8 pm. Sowe should realize this inhuman condition of these young girls of the garments industries.

Learning Objectives

After reading this chapter, you are expected to learn about:

realize the passage and describe it in your own word

answer the short questions based on the passage;

make sentences with words used in the passage; and

describe life of a Garment worker and the tasks performed by her.

Life of a Garment Worker

Life of a garment worker

Most of the garment workers lead very poor lives. They come from different areas of the country and join various factories of Dhaka and Chittagong. Most of them live in slum areas. They come with other garment worker of their native villages. They do not get facility of edcation, good food, transport facility,accommoda

Education

The young poor girls do not afford to get education for poverty. Most of the girls are of 16 to 30 years. This age is proper time for education but they are deprived of that.

Job Description

Garment workers go to factories very early in the morning and return home at 8 or 9pm at night. They sometimes do not get suitable remuneration. Sometimes salary is not paid in due time. In a word, they suffer a lot.

Life of Nasima

Nasima is a garment worker. She works in Oriental Garments, which is located in Elephant Road , Dhaka. She has been working there for about three years. Her main task is sewing garments.
Nasima lives near Azimpur with some other garment workers. Everyday she goes to work and comes back home on foot.It takes nearly thirty minutes, but she wants to save money and therefore walks much. Nasima is from a village. Shen passed her SSC exam in 1998. She then desired to go to college but her father Abu Hanif told her that he was unable to bear her expenses.She was sad to hear this. But she knew that her father was poor. They have a big family of three sisters and two brothers. She is the second child of her parents. Her father has a tea stall in a local market. Her mother looks after the family. She is very often sick due to malnutrition.

Struggle of Nasima

Nasima wanted to help her family. So she came to Dhaka with a girl from their village. She was upset to leave her parents behind. She was unhappy to give up her studies, but she knew that she could not continue to do so.After cpoming to Dhaka Nasima started looking for a job but it was difficult for her to get one. At last she got a job in Oriental Garments.A girl from her village who works there , managed to get her the job.

Self-Assessment Questions (SAQs) - 1

1. Make sentences with the following words.

* Sad

* Younger,

* Give up,

* Unable,

* Expenses

2. Answer each of the following questions:

(a) Where does a garment worker work?

(b) Why couldn’t she go to school and college?

(c) Why is it difficult for her father to maintain their family?

(d) Where is she from?

Results

Key Points

The key points of this chapter are as follows:

Garments

Struggle

Poverty

Lifestyle

Practice Test

Now describe your family and include the following points:
(a) Family size
(b) Total members
(c) Head of the family along with profession
(d) Mother
(e) Children, what they do.

References and Further Readings

Buisiness English, Bachelor of Business Studies, Open School, March,2007, Bangladesh Open University, Gazipur.

(: A reference is a book that is other than BOU reading text. So, delete this.)